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The Government of the Republic of Serbia

In the service of citizens

€5 million to be invested in five oncology centres in Serbia by year’s end

Belgrade, 30 August 2006

Serbian Minister of Health Tomica Milosavljevic said today that it is planned that funds worth €5 million from the National Investment Plan will be invested in five oncology centres in Serbia by the end of the year.

Tomica Milosavljevic and Zoran Krivokapic

Author: Tanjug

Milosavljevic told a press conference that the number of patients in Serbia suffering from malignant diseases grows every year at a rate from three percent to five percent, and said that from January 1 2008 a national screening programme will begin in Serbia, which will ensure the detection of tumors that do not display symptoms.

He pointed to the fact that carcinoma of the colon, breast and cervix, if detected at an early stage, is fully curable, while the fight against lung cancer is not early detection, rather prevention.

According to Milosavljevic, every year 10,000 persons die of a smoking related disease. For this reason prices of cigarettes should be higher, policies for punishing smokers must be stricter, smoking must become socially unacceptable, smoking by underage persons should be completely suppressed, and the number of smokers must be reduced by half the Minister stated.

He presented the fact that every moment in Serbia 18,000 persons receive medicines for treating malignant diseases, more than 2,000 patients receive medicines on the “C List”, which are expensive cytostatic medicines, and in 2005 some 900 patients were treated with these medicines.

He said that in 2004 a sum of 763 million dinars was spent from the Insurance Fund for cytostatic therapy, in 2005 the sum spent was 993 million dinars, and up to June 2006 funds worth 633 million dinars were spent for this purpose. He added that by the end of the year the money spent will be twice that of 2004.

According to Milosavljevic, there is a waiting list for expensive procedures such as scanning and magnetic resonance imaging, coronography, heart surgery and radiation, but emergency cases are treated differently.

President of the Serbian Oncology Committee Nenad Borojevic said that some 30,000 persons become ill with malignant diseases in Serbia every year, and currently the number of patients is 120,000.

Annually 4,000 women develop breast carcinoma, of which 1,400 die and cervical carcinoma affects 1,400 women every year said Borojevic.

The Minister's advisor for prevention and early detection of colon cancer Zoran Krivokapic pointed to the fact that annually more than a million persons in the world are ill with colon cancer, 500,000 of which die. In Serbia this figures stands at more than 600,000 patients, of which 300,000 die.

He said that at the moment not a single patient has to wait for surgery more than two weeks, but added that more than 40% of surgeries in this branch are carried out in Belgrade, because of which it is necessary that only complicated procedures are carried out in the capital city.